[happypumpkin]

I'm Gen-Z and talking to a human representative of a company makes me much more confident that something will happen as a result of my efforts (though still not certain).

I scheduled an apartment viewing recently, and the only method they provided to do so was chatting with an AI (seriously)... I then tried and failed to find a way to contact a human for confirmation multiple times. Lo and behold nobody at the leasing office when I showed up at the scheduled time. Came back later and eventually found somebody - they had not seen anything I'd done with the bot.

Software for small businesses and local governments is often really bad and I'd much prefer to make sure a person knows what I'm trying to get accomplished.

[janalsncm]

When I was searching for apartments every complex had the same AI program for scheduling. It was horrible.

I got to talk to one of the leasing managers at one of the viewings and I told him it made them seem cheaper, not more tech-savvy. He told me they had spent millions of dollars on it.

[happypumpkin]

Crazy. If they won't let me speak to a person I'd still much prefer just having a generic click-your-timeslot web app than waste time talking to a bot. And for millions of dollars they could just hire a human for a decade or more...

[boscillator]

There seems to be a semi-infinite market for garbage software sold to landlords. At my current place I need an account to unlock my door, a different account to open the garage door (because the garage is managed by a third party), an account to reserve the elevator for move in day (which tried to up sell me moving services), an account to get sent my water bill which charges me $15 a month for the privilege (I don't pay me bill though this service, just have it emailed to me) , an account to pay rent and and an account to submit maintenance requests. Part of the trick seems to be to offload the costs onto the tenets who have no choice, but I'm sure our landlord is paying a good chunk for some of these.

If you have minimal to zero scruples, this seems to be an easy market to make a start up in. Landlords will buy anything!

[happypumpkin]

Don't forget the account to open shared mailboxes for packages. "Luxor" for me. It actually works so I don't mind much but I hadn't really considered how much extra rent all the apps might be costing me.

[inetknght]

> When I was searching for apartments every complex had the same AI program for scheduling. It was horrible.

Was it RealPage? I hear they're illegally colluding to raise prices.

[burningChrome]

Had the same thing happen for a town home I was interested in buying. Went through their online scheduling app. Got email confirmation with agent's name, but no phone number. Got another confirmation day of. Didn't think anything was amiss. Go out to building, wait for 20 mins and leave after agent was a no-show, no-call.

I called their office and after 20 minutes of trying to go around their obnoxious automated phone menu's I finally got someone who informed me who said they don't use THAT app any more to schedule appointments I need to use their NEW app and sent me a totally different app link in an email. I told them they are probably losing a ton of business because very clearly the OTHER app is still very much out in the wild and still very much being used.

I went with a different company and had much better luck.